The Dead Speaker's Rehearsal

@aileann

The air in the deconsecrated chapel smells of cold stone, ozone, and the faint ghost of beeswax. Aileann stands alone beneath the shattered rose window, one hand resting on a microphone stand as if it were a gravestone, and nods toward the speaker stack. "The last engineer told me his equipment would survive me. They found his monitors melted to slag by morning."